the curiosity of compassion

Ask about your enemy’s wounds and scars

Seek his hidden cause of trouble

Feed your enemy’s children

Learn their word for home

Repair their well.

Learn their sorrow’s history.

Trace their lineage of good.

Ask them for a song.

Make tea.  Break bread

                        Kim Stafford

______________________________

We have lost a jewel of great value

It slipped away somehow

While we were not looking

While our fingers threw,

Tweets like stones,

And we raged with righteousness,

It fell from our hearts and was gone

The curiosity of compassion

We listen and look

We react and respond

But we do not ask

Questions are the tools of empathy and understanding

Where did it come from, that hate that spews?

What was the genesis of that unfathomable thought?

Who, or what, wounded this one so badly?

What is this person’s story?

Who is this person?

Who is so much more than what I see or hear?

Understanding is not acquiescence

But it creates sacred space

In which connection and healing happen

That space in which that raging fool,

Is transformed into a deeply wounded person

Where anger is metamorphosed into pain

That space in which I gain access once again to my own heart

And can meet the other

As a fellow human being

With the curiosity of compassion

My eyes and heart are opened to the wonder and complexity

Of the precious soul in front of me

And to the wonder and complexity of my own soul

It should be no surprise that we have more stories of Jesus

Eating

Than stories of Jesus

Preaching

I can think of very few times when I have “argued” my way into reconciliation

But I can think of many times

When over a meal

Or over a task (those who paint church basements together, come together)

Communion has been born

We live in a world full of shouting,

pushing,

demanding

Judging,

insisting

maybe it’s time to stop

and listen

and understand

tea anyone?